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spectful to a cherished article of housewifery. It was quite characteristic of Tom that he instantly pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and began therewith to restore the brightness of the desecrated iron. This went at once to the old lady's heart. She snatched the handkerchief out of his hand.

"Come, come, Mr. Thomas. Don't ye mind an old woman like that. To think of using your handkerchief that way! And cambric, too!

Thomas looked up in surprise, and straightway recovered his behaviour.

"I didn't think of your fender," he said. "Oh, drat the fender!" exclaimed Mrs. Boxall, with more energy than refinement.

And so the matter dropped, and all sat silent for a few moments, Mrs. Boxall with her knitting, and Tom and Lucy beside each other with their thoughts. Lucy presently returned to their talk on the staircase.

"Is my cousin Mary very pretty?" asked Lucy, with a meaning in her tone which Thomas easily enough understood.

He could not help blushing, for he remembered, as well he might. And she could not help seeing, for she had eyes, very large ones, and at least as loving as they were large.

"Yes, she is very pretty," answered Thomas; "but not nearly so pretty as you, Lucy."

Thomas, then, was not stupid, although my reader will see that he was weak enough. And Lucy was more than half satisfied, though she did not half like that blush. But Thomas himself did not like either the blush or its cause. And poor Mary knew nothing of either, only meditated upon another blush, quite like this as far as appearance went, but with a different heart to it.

Thomas did not stop more than half-an-hour. When he left, instead of walking straight out of

"So you were out at dinner on Wednesday, Guild Court by the narrow paved passage, he Thomas?"

"Yes. It was a great bore, but I had to go.Boxall's, you know. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Boxall; but that's how fellows like me talk, you now. I should have said Mr. Boxall, And I didn't mean that he was a bore. That he is not, though he is a little particular-of course. I only Leant it was a bore to go there when I wanted to come here."

crossed to the opposite side of the court, opened the door of a more ancient-looking house, and entered. Reappearing-that is, to the watchful eyes of Lucy manoeuvring with the window-blind-after about two minutes, he walked home to Highbury, and told his mother that he had come straight from his German master, who gave him hopes of being able, before many months should have passed, to write a business-letter in intelligible German.

THE METEORIC SHOWER OF NOVEMBER 14, 1866.
BY THE REV. C. PRITCHARD, M.A., F.R.S., President of the Royal Astronomical Society.

THERE are some "Aspects of Nature" the first sight of which always constitutes a memorable epoch in the personal histories of those who behold them; an earthquake for instance, or a total eclipse of the sun, or even the first view of the glorious snow-topped Alps. There is also another "Aspect of Nature," and that in her wildest and grandest mood, which it is hoped thousands of our countrymen, of this generation, witnessed a few nights ago, bat such as there is no record that our fathers ever saw, and no certainty that our children after us may have the privilege to see. The chance of a cloudy night at one of the cloudiest seasons of the year may render the spectacle for them, as it might have done for us, impossible. The reader will have anticipated that the phenomenon alluded to is the periodic November shower of meteors at its maximum display. It is the memorable sight of thousands upon thousands of momentary lights with fiery trails, and of many hues, lighting up the landscape and the midnight sky, and spreading often in volleys like fans of rockets over the blue vault and amidst the stars of heaven, and that incessantly and for a long space of time. Meanwhile there is this notable difference: there is the consciousness that rockets have a human birthplace, and there is the whirr,

and the hiss, and the boom, the inevitable attendants on the busy works of man; but here, in the unbroken stillness of the night, we have the fairy scene of some high festival of celestial spirits, illuminations devised and lighted by no human hands, but starting into brightness in all the majesty of the depth of utter silence. There are fires unearthly and innumerable, but there is no sound. An earthquake may be more terrible in the mysterious heaving or the crash, yet the terror is the terror of a moment: an eclipse of the sun may be more gorgeous, and appalling, and strange, yet that gloomy standstill of universal nature is gone in the space of minutes few to count, though never to be forgotten; but in this November star shower the spectacle rose and culminated, and fell, with a gradation and a magnificence, which kept the spectator entranced for a full hour together. It is and will be an epoch of the century.

We now proceed to more sober particulars, and shall first of all endeavour to describe the phenomena actually observed, a task in itself of no small difficulty, and then see what light science, or theory, or conjecture, can throw upon the meaning and origin of the spectacle.

The astronomical world had been duly reminded

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of the expected star-shower by means of the Monthly Notices" of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the public at large had been similarly warned by the daily journals that an unusually grand display of meteors might be expected during the early morning hours of the thirteenth or the fourteenth of November. About this period of the year, namely from the ninth to the fourteenth of November, shooting stars are commonly seen in considerable abundance, but Professor Newton of Yale College in America, by searching ancient records, had discovered that three times in about every century the November display had hitherto attained to a remarkable magnificence. The intelligent observation of meteors is of comparatively recent date, and consequently there as yet always remains a small amount of uncertainty as to the precise hours of the particular nights when, and as to the particular points of the heavens from which, a meteor display may be expected. Nevertheless there are perhaps during each year some fifty particular epochs approximately ascertained, and also the particular spots, or radiant points as they are called, from which the fiery flights may be expected to originate. On the particular occasion of this year it was not quite certain whether the meteor shower would occur on the thirteenth or on the fourteenth, nor in fact whether it would be visible in Europe at all; but, if visible, the radiant point back to which the trails of the shooting stars would appear to be traceable, was predicted to be situated near to certain particular stars in the constellation Leo. The latter prediction turned out to be very nearly, though not exactly correct.

The locality from which the following observations were made is peculiarly well suited for the purpose, both with respect to that large portion of the heavens, the view of which it commands, and on account of the surrounding scenery, the exquisite beauty of which would be enhanced if the expected display occurred. This locality is on a hill some 150 feet above the level of the sea, not far from the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and rendered all the more classical from its proximity to the residence of the greatest of living poets. From the west, through the north and east, to the south there is an uninterrupted view. From west to east, and from the Needles to Southampton Water, runs the Solent, more like a majestic river or a winding lake than a portion of the Channel: due north is Hurst Castle, with its twin light-house and its long white line of fortifications; while over and beyond them stretches, in clear prospect, almost the whole of Hampshire. Due east lies the vale of Freshwater, and over it, in the far distence, lie the Royal Woods, and the hills which conceal Newport and the two towers of Osborne. Exactly on the southern meridian rises the Beacon, which crowns one of the highest chalk downs in England. A scene this, if indeed any scene, almost worthy of the unearthly lights which at a moonless midnight were soon to throw it into one broad visible perspective. Had

we ascended the Beacon Hill, a mile distant, as originally intended, the view would have been one uninterrupted panorama of land and sea; but then the well known November winds were dreaded, and the weather bore no promise propitious for a bivouac. We determined therefore to leave well alone; the members of the writer's family were instructed what to look for and when to look, while the writer himself proposed to keep his eye well fixed nigh to that point of the heavens (that is, the radiant point) from the neighbourhood of which it was expected the aerial flights would take their origin, or back to which their fiery trails might be traced.

The night, or rather the early morning of the thirteenth, was watched with intense but natural anxiety. Wind and cloud and rain soon dashed our expectations, and we could only hope that other observers were favoured with better weather than ourselves, but have since learned that almost throughout the country they were doomed to similar disappointment, and in their turns were wishing a better fate for us. And this explains what we have already said regarding the doubtful prospect which awaits our children in England, that they, thirty-three years hence, may be permitted to witness a repetition of the spectacle their fathers saw in 1866.

At intervals, however, during the early morning of the thirteenth there were occasional breaks in the clouds, and now and then, had bright meteors existed in any abundance, some of them must have been seen. But the heavens gave no sign. Thus, none having been recorded by any of our watchers, we consoled ourselves that Alexander Herschel's prediction, or rather forewarning of the fourteenth rather than the thirteenth, might yet remain to be fulfilled. With this forced but consolatory hope, we, and no doubt hundreds of others, discontinued our fruitless watch and retired to bed.

The late hours of the evening of Tuesday the thirteenth of November, here, as almost everywhere throughout England, were such as an astronomer longs, but often longs in vain, to see. At one minute before midnight we first looked through a large window commanding the north-west nearly to the north-east, and before we had time to exclaim, "What a magnificent sky!" the train of a bright meteor sailed before our eyes. But now arose the crucial question, "Where did it come from?" "Is it one of our meteors, our proper November meteors?" It seemed indeed to have come from low in the north-east, just where the radiant point in Leo ought to be, but which from our position was not at the moment actually visible. A moment after, and while we were in doubt, a second meteor shot, not now in the same line as the former, but across Ursa Major, and which, when its trail was in imagination traced backwards, beyond all doubt intersected the course of the former meteor rather low in the north-east. Thus the question was decided, and it became clear that the long-expected display had commenced.

We now were looking, at all events, at the first droppings of the November fiery shower. We counted fifty-five meteors shooting from the northeast towards the north in the twenty-six minutes between 11h. 59m. and 12h. 25m., i.e., at the rate of two per minute in the very limited portion of the sky to which at the time we mainly directed our attention and our eyes. It now became apparent that the fiery shower was commencing in right earnest, and that our earth, or rather its atmosphere, was approaching the very thick of the meteors, consequently each of us went to the post assigned to him or to her. After the lapse of a few minutes, it became evident to the writer that any attempt to count the number of the meteors with an available amount of precision must, by dint of their very abundance, prove abortive; he therefore and another watcher agreed to keep their eyes well fixed upon the neighbourhood of "the Sickle," and simply count the number of the shooting stars which pelted or pierced the constellation Orion, and meanwhile the other inmates of the house were directed to watch things in general, and record any circumstance which seemed more striking than the rest.

In front of the writer, but a little to the north and the left, stood out in the sky unmistakeable, the now charmed region of the six stars in Leo, which, without stretch of imagination, seem to form the contour of the handle and hook of a reaper's sickle. Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation, marks the extremity of the handle, while five other conspicuous stars form the figure of the hook. To the right and the south-east stood out Orion, the glory of our northern skies: the eye, following the three stars in his belt downwards, lights upon Sirius, perhaps the brightest star in the heavens, and upwards in pretty much the same line, it falls in with Aldebaran and the Pleiades. To the left of Orion, and high up, blazed Castor and Pollux, and beneath them hung the ruddy lamp of Mars. Almost over our heads was that well-known triple sun in Andromeda, wherewith astronomers are wont to test the powers of their instruments, and where the inhabitants, if such there be, of the worlds which circulate around those wondrous suns, enjoy alternate days of golden and of emerald light. At one o'clock in the morning, with us not a cloud obscured a single star in the heavens, from north to south, and from the horizon to the zenith the stars had trimmed their lights as for some high festival: it was a night much to be remembered. From 12h. 30m. to 1h. 30m. the star storm waxed, and culminated, and waned. At 12h. 30m. the fiery trains shot into or through Orion at the rate of two per minute, and with a velocity probably of some thirty miles per second. By 1. A.M. the pelting had increased to five per minute; at 1h. 5m. A.M. it was at the rate of six; at 1h. 12m. it was at the rate of eight. Soon after this a long dark rain-cloud for a time intercepted our view of this now much suffering but famous hunter of ancient days. When we next

saw him at 2h. A.M., the fiery wounds were reduced to three only in the minute, and half-anhour after, the rate was two; while at 3h. A.M. it had subsided to about nine in ten minutes. Thus it was evident that our part of the earth was now clear of the thick of the sparkling storm.

During all this grand spectacle, the reader must remember that our counting and our eyes were directed to but one inconsiderable patch of the heavens, in fact to a single constellation. To other eyes the meteor trains were starting in all directions over the whole expanse of the sky; but the trails of all that we saw, with but one exception, when traced backwards, passed through the one charmed, fated spot in the forementioned Sickle in Leo, and somewhat near to the upper part of the hook. To the eyes of two of us this spot was as definitely marked as if a small hole had been punched in a star map. It was curious and interesting to see, how, as time went on, and as Leo gradually rose in the heavens, continuing his inevitable march towards the south, so the radiant point rose with it, and the trails of the fire stars obeyed the new direction, just as a compass in motion continues to turn to the magnetic pole. To the writer's mind this was all the more remarkable, because the spot was not precisely in the exact situation predicted, and he knew from the first that the exact determination of the radiant point was a matter of prime importance in the observations before us. Before mid-day of the fourteenth the spot was marked with a dot in a star-chart with the words Nov. 14, G. M. T. XIII, as a record of the events, and three days afterwards a letter came from one of the ablest and most cautious of living astronomers recording the same precise spot as the result of his own observations, and drawing certain most interesting and, in this respect, most important conclusions therefrom.

But to return to our meteors. Between the hours of one and two in the morning, a single person looking east counted nearly 1500, and many must have been missed. At three minutes past one 60 were counted in a minute; in the next minute 60 again, and then 30, and then 36, and then 34, and at seven minutes past one the number suddenly shot up to 64, and in the next waned to 38. Thus the meteors evidently came, as has been already stated, and as we saw then, oft-times in volleys, and spread over the sky like the ends of the veins of an open fan.

But what was very curious and extremely interesting to our eyes, directed as they were in the main to the afore-mentioned Sickle, every now and then there would break out, close to the radiant point, a little bright fiery spangle, burning for a moment or two without a train, and then gradually going out. At first these apparitions puzzled us, and perplexed our notions of the actual stars which we knew and had seen formed the constellation. Once the writer rubbed his eyes, to see or to feel if there were something wrong with him, but the true significance of these new temporary stars soon occurred to his mind, and he rejoiced to observe

that all was right and consistent, and just what in fact ought to have been expected.

Very few of the meteors appeared to have luminous heads, they mostly resembled the trails of squibs or rockets, and were of various lengths, hues, and directions. One fire-ball, however, with a long train, did shoot I was told right into the thick of Ursa Major, shining much brighter than Sirius. I saw another sail with a stately light over the shoulders of Orion towards the stars in Aries, but before it got there, it dissolved, and spread rather than burst, into a fleecy fiery cloud which as it wafted away remained visible for nearly four minutes. Another observer, but not of our party, observed a luminous trail for some few minutes persistently pointing backwards to the radiant point, and then commence the vagary of turning round at right angles to its original direction.

What struck us almost as much as any other phenomenon of the whole spectacle, was the ominous noiselessness; the dead, utter silence of the entire fiery display. One of our party did indeed imagine that she heard some crackling and booming noise proceed from the bright-headed meteor which shot into Ursa Major: but her companions did not verify the remark. The writer well remembers that when, at the great solar eclipse of 1860, viewed from the Spanish mountains, the shadow of the moon shot from Bilbao to his station at Cujuli, covering in an instant, as with the rapid motion of a shawl, the entire intervening country, and wrapping it in sudden darkness, it was almost impossible not to believe that the imaginary shawl passed by with a whiff and a wind, whereas all was in reality as motionless as death; so now, in the midst of all these fiery trains, it was difficult for us to silence the imagination, and hear with the mind's ear no hissing and no sound. It is this circumstance of the entire absence of sound which probably was unconsciously the cause, why some observers have assimilated a meteor shower to a fall of snow, for, in other respects, no simile can be less adequate to reproduce the impression of what actually occurs. An able astronomer very pertinently remarks, that the scene often resembled salvos of artillery discharged from the other side of the sky with the evident determination to hit something on the side nearer to the spectator.

Such was the November star-shower as we saw it from our lovely watch-place. It was a night much to be remembered. An epoch in the lives of those who were permitted merely to see the beauty of the spectacle, much more so to those who could read something of the grandeur of its meaning.

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man when he comes to explain to others or to himself, the meaning, the indications, the causes, so far as he knows them, of the phenomena observed. Somehow these meteors get mixed up with the whole theory of the universe; to grasp or to explain the little that we know of them, we have to traverse almost the whole domain of scientific knowledge; and then, too, unbidden thoughts come in, reminding us of that still greater thing, the human mind;— how little and how feeble it is when viewed on the side of its ignorance, and yet how magnificent must be the capacities with which it is endowed, seeing that it pierces its way and penetrates right to the throne of Him who made it like to Himself.

To proceed then with our explanation of meteoric phenomena, as far at least as learned and thoughtful men are as yet able to penetrate into their mysteries; for it must be clearly borne in mind that the intelligent study of these fiery messengers is comparatively a thing of yesterday. We have good reason to believe that the interplanetary spaces are not mere voids as they were once supposed to be. Almost during the memory of living men nearly ninety masses, revolving round the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, have already been added to the planetary system, and every year of late has contributed to swell their number. These masses are very much smaller than those of the well-known planets, and in fact most of them are too small to admit as yet of weight or measurement. But besides these there are rings of matter, of disconnected matter, revolving round the sun as the planets do, and these small bodies thus arranged in rings may be regarded as planetary dust, for their weight varies from a few grains to possibly as many pounds. These rings of cosmical dust appear to lie at various distances from the sun, and are inclined at all sorts of angles to the earth's orbit. We have reason also to conjecture these dust rings to be of variable thicknesses, both in comparison with each other and with the various portions of each particular ring. Moreover there probably are very many larger masses comparable rather with hundredweights and tons, than with grains and ounces, which circulate round the sun sporadically, and perhaps sometimes in very eccentric or parabolic orbits like the comets. We begin to think also that those mysterious appendages to Saturn, which we call his rings, and which in the most powerful telescopes and to the sharpest and most scrutinising eyes appear to be numerous, are nothing more than the same sort of dust rings which we have seen circulate round the sun. It is quite certain that through the matter (or the interstices of the matter) of one of these rings, the body of the planet is visible. Akin to these, it is not impossible, may be that something which surrounds the sun like a thick lens, and from whence proceeds the zodiacal light.* Thus, as in the organic world the

But now, and after all, what was the meaning of the things we had witnessed? If the reader has gone with us through the utterly inadequate description given above, without enthusiasm or with no emotion, very different was the state of mind with which we kept our midnight watch. We must plead guilty if we are impeached with excitement. The zodiacal light is not often visible in this country, Nor will this excitement cease with any thoughtful and probably very few persons have ever seen it. Åt

microscope discloses all things, whether drop, or bustion, all appear (in general) to meet in one point. dust, or mote, to be teeming with life, so in the This appearance necessarily follows from the laws interplanetary spaces, which to the unaided eye of perspective. The earth and its atmosphere seem so clear, so transparent, so void, science and during the small time of their motion through the the telescope reveal the existence of myriads upon ring of revolving meteors, may be considered as myriads of inorganic bodies. Such being the case moving in a straight line, and successively impingit cannot but be that our atmosphere must some- ing on a vast number of small bodies, themselves times, and perhaps continually, come into collision | moving parallel to each other; the consequence of with not a few of these fiery planets swarming the collision will be an equal number of parallel round the sun, almost as thickly as bees swarm fiery streaks proceeding from the various points of round their queen. But we must here note the the atmosphere which come into contact with the violence of the impact; it may vary from almost meteors. Now, all such parallel fiery streaks being nothing to the terrific speed of some 40 or 50 miles at a great distance from the spectator, will to his per second, according as the earth and the planetary eye appear to diverge from one single point, just dust happen to be moving in the same or in opposite as the four or more parallel iron lines of a railroad directions. In this latter case no known terrestrial appear so to meet in one distant point; and just as material could escape first a melting, and then a they would all appear to meet in a point if the vaporising into ignited gas, by the reason of the parallel lines were piled in successive tiers to the heat evolved by the collision. If the collision occur right and to the left, above and below. Such then in a clear night, and the meteoric mass be small, we is the radiant point of a meteoric shower; shall have the appearance of a shooting star with a it is the vanishing point of all the parallel fiery tail only; if it be larger, we may have a fire-ball flights of the several meteoric bodies as they succesand tail; if larger still, we may have the spectacle sively enter into combustion. The course which of a fiery mass splitting into pieces with a crash and the distant meteor appears to describe will be a boom, and then scattered over a larger or a smaller determined by joining the radiant point with the portion of the fields below. On the other hand the last spot at which the meteor is seen as it apcollision will, in general, but not in extreme cases, proaches the observer. escape human notice, if it occur in broad daylight; and the only result will be, first, an evolution of gaseous products, and then a gradual deposition of unseen fine meteoric dust.

Such, then, we believe to be the origin of meteoric showers; and it was by observing the velocity of the flight of some such burning masses, and comparing the intensity of the light evolved from them with the light evolved from the burning of known weights of terrestrial matter, that a Herschel of the third generation recently approximated, with great ingenuity, to the probable weight of certain meteoric bodies. We may not here stop to explain the process, but must rest contented with the indication of the fact. The results of this indirect method of weighing a shooting star, varied from about the sixteenth of an ounce to a few pounds.

Our next endeavour must be the explanation of the phenomenon of the radiant point, to which we have so frequently adverted. In a star shower, the trains which the meteors leave behind them, i.e. the directions in which they had been moving during comClapham, near London, one zealous and highly competent observer sat up the whole night, and the whole of the preceding one, resolved that no circumstance should escape him through want of vigilance. The reward of his perseverance was a sight of the zodiacal light, which made its appearance at 5h. 10m. on the morning of the 14th, in the shape of a brilliant cone, the base of which was on the eastern horizon, with its summit reaching nearly to the constellation Leo. "This," our informant very naïvely adds, "completed my observations for the occasion." It is somewhat unfortunate that this gentleman was not at the moment provided with an instrument for the spectrum analysis of this light. M. du Chaillu states that in equatorial regions, the brightness of the zodiacal light is sufficiently intense to render the Milky Way not discernible.

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In the recent case of the November star-shower there is strong reason to Believe the circular ring of meteors was very nearly at the same distance from the sun in its centre, as the earth is in her own orbit; but this meteor ring is inclined to the plane of the earth's orbit at nearly twenty degrees. The thickest, or most crowded part of this ring of meteors crossed the earth's path just where the earth was, about 1h. 15m. on the morning of the fourteenth of November. The meteors in this ring circulate round the sun in a retrograde direction, and consequently the "motes of this meteoric beam" and the earth's atmosphere, shoot into each other with a velocity nearly double that of the earth's orbital velocity, and probably at the rate of between thirty and forty miles a second. When we take into due consideration, and combine together, the motion of the earth itself, and that of the meteors in their inclined and retrograde orbits just described, we have a complete explanation of the reason why the trains appeared to have their vanishing point on that very spot or radiant point in the constellation Leo, which was so definitely and clearly observed on the particular occasion before us.

We are now also in a condition to explain a circumstance already alluded to, viz., why, close in the neighbourhood of the radiant point, there would every now and then occur a sort of temporary fiery spangle, which, as we have said, at the first greatly puzzled us from its resemblance to some star of the constellation, which we well knew did not in reality exist. These apparitions were nothing more than the perspective appearances of meteors, whose fiery trains had either been greatly foreshortened, or even reduced to a point, like the lamp of a locomo

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